MacBook Pro With Retina Display Gives Apple 1-Year Lead on Ultrabooks

Apple's next-generation MacBook Pro is about as thin as a MacBook Air, as fast as high-end desktop computers, and features the highest-resolution notebook screen ever made. And, according to industry analysts, the new notebook pushes Apple at least a year ahead of the best competing ultrabooks and high-end PC notebooks.

"It will likely take rivals a year or two to catch up," Forrester analyst Frank Gillet told Wired. "Anybody can go buy the processors from Intel, but even the track pads from these companies can't match Apple. Apple has more discipline and control over every aspect of these machines, so it's tough for the other guys, the Windows guys, to compete."

Weight, processing power, display, track pad and build quality – Apple is delivering premium products at a premium price. The new MacBook Pro with Retina display starts at $2,199 and can fetch as much as $3,749 with added options. The strategy of most of Apple's rivals, so far, has been to undercut Apple on price in the shrinking PC market, Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst, told Wired.

"The new MacBook Pro is the evolution of a species," said Milanesi. "All computers will have to be thinner and lighter because, as consumers, we are taking them different places. But there really is nothing out there like the MacBook Pro Retina yet. Apple raised the bar today."

Officially known as the MacBook Pro with Retina display, Apple's latest top-of-the-line notebook features a display with a 2880x1800 resolution, or more than 5 million pixels sprawled out across 15.4-inches of glass. By comparison, the regular 15-inch MacBook Pro has a 1440×900 resolution screen, and the 13-inch MacBook sports a 1280x800 display.

On the inside, the MacBook Pro with Retina display, along with its non-retina counterparts, offer desktop-replacement-level power, Milanesi said. This includes the latest Intel Core i7 quad-core processors clocked at up to 2.7GHz, as much as 16GB of RAM, up to 768GB of flash storage, and updated graphics, too, with Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics cards built in.

The MacBook Pro with Retina display ditches the optical drives available in previous Pro generations, allowing Apple to slim the laptop down to 0.71-inches thick and only 4.46 pounds. The thickness of the new MacBook Pro is actually near identical to that of the wedge-shaped MacBook Air at the Air's thickest point – pretty astounding for such a high-performing machine.

For connectivity, Apple is including two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card slot, and an HDMI port for connecting to displays for HDTVs.

MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Photo: Jon Philips/Wired

"The only thing that you could argue against the MacBook Pro with Retina display is that it's heavy compared to an ultrabook, at about four and a half pounds," Gillet said. "But it isn't an ultrabook. The MacBook competes with ultrabooks, but there isn't an ultrabook on the market that fully matches the Air right now."

A more proper comparison for the MacBook Pro with Retina display would be Apple's iMac, a full desktop computer, Gillet said. The Apple iMac line wasn't updated Monday, but Apple did revamp its MacBook Air line and non-Retina-display MacBook Pros. Across the Air and MacBook pro ranges, the company added new USB 3.0 ports, faster processors, more RAM and larger Flash storage options. Apple also discontinued its 17-inch MacBook Pro Monday.

The new MacBook Airs feature either Intel's Core i5 or Core i7 dual-core processors, with up to 2.9GHz clock speeds available for the 13-inch model, and up to 2GHz for the 11-inch unit. Both the 11-inch and 13-inch models can handle up to 8GB of RAM.

The Mac Pro, Apple's high-end desktop, hasn't seen a major update in about two years. But on Monday, the tower received a quiet spec bump that pushes the Mac Pro to utilize as much as two 3.06GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon processors, offering up to 12 cores of computing power. Such a machine would start at a price of $6,199 and, unlike every laptop Apple now produces, it wouldn't feature even a single USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt port.